Amazon Slaughters Tolkien: Rings of Power Season 2 Finale Review

(Warning: Major spoilers)

I don’t watch a lot of TV, but Amazon’s 60-100 million dollar per episode “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” was the worst show I’ve ever seen.

As I made clear in my season 2 mid-season review, I was not a fan of the dawdling first four episodes. But then, briefly, it seemed the show might turn around. The next three episodes were better. Not perfect. Not great. Not nearly as good as Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s work. But better.

Barely.

Then, the disastrous season finale, which premiered on Thursday, shattered any hope showrunners J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay might have had of salvaging their inept parody of Middle-earth. Rings of Power season 2 was more than just a bad show; it made a mockery of Tolkien’s brilliant, imaginative, old-world fantasy, torching the author’s beloved lore for no apparent reason.

If there’s any reason to endure this show at all, we have Charlie Vickers’ Halbrand/Annatar/Sauron to thank. His psychological warfare with Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), arguably the show’s second-best character, whom the Dark Lord partners with/manipulates to forge the rings of power, is tense and absorbing. In a show dominated by miscasts and poor acting, Vickers and Edwards turn out gripping performances. Annatar’s menacing blank stares, louring twitches, abusive jabs followed by disarming slight smiles; Edwards’ painfully drawn-out, gut-wrenching decline into insanity and despair — it’s all almost worth watching. Almost.

There’s just one problem. 

The logic behind these almost-great scenes makes no sense. Like, none.

Courtesy of Payne and McKay, who seem to have taken Tolkien’s story (which is brilliant, by the way), thrown it into a blender, and asked Míriel, the blind Queen of Númenor, to reassemble the pieces, the show’s sole saving grace is tainted by shoddy logic and embarrassing plot holes. 

According to the source material, Annatar, Celebrimbor, and the Gwaith-i-Mírdain (Brotherhood of Jewel-smiths) perfected their craft together for 300 years before they began work on the rings of power. In that time, they forged many “essay” rings, which are crucial to understanding why, in the future, Gandalf is not more suspicious of Bilbo’s Ring (the One Ring); he mistakenly presumes the hobbit possessed one of many test rings. Such rings make no appearance in Amazon’s retelling, raising questions about the Grey Wizard’s glaring lack of foresight. Unfortunately, that’s the least of the book fans’ concerns.

In Tolkien’s lore, after three centuries of working together, Annatar and Celebrimbor finally begin their most important work: the forging of the rings of power, all of which were originally meant for the elves. Annatar, distrusted by other elves, including Elrond and Galadriel, preys on Celebrimbor’s psychic insecurity to gain access to his forges: as the only living grandson of Fëanor, the greatest elven smith in history, the Lord of Eregion longs to prove his quality and escape his grandfather’s shadow. Working with Annatar, whom Celebrimbor believes to be an emissary from the Valar, provides him with the opportunity to do exactly that. Together, over about 90 years, they fashion 16 magnificent rings of unparalleled power, seemingly casting as many as they can, before Annatar leaves the Gwaith-i-Mírdain for a time to craft the One Ring — the Ruling Ring — for himself. Celebrimbor, still unaware of Annatar’s deception, similarly seeks to prove that he, too, can create rings without his companion’s oversight. He creates three more — the only rings of power never touched or corrupted by Sauron.

But when the Dark Lord finishes the forging of the One Ring and, for the first time, places it upon his hand, Celebrimbor, at last, perceives the true treachery of Sauron. Distributing the unsullied rings to trusted Elf-lords for safekeeping (these three become known as the Elven Rings, Vilya, Narya, and Nenya), Celebrimbor secures the rest in a vault in Eregion. Denied entry to the city, Sauron holds Eregion under siege and ransacks the region. He eventually captures Celebrimbor, torturing him for the location of the rings. Although the once mighty elven smith reveals the whereabouts of the 16 lesser rings, he refuses to disclose the location of the Three.

Killing Celebrimbor and bearing his disfigured body on a post, Sauron claims the rings locked in the city’s vaults, which he begins to distribute at random to the people of Middle-earth — nine for mortal men and seven for dwarves, all of whom he believes he can recruit to his cause. Although the dwarves prove surprisingly resistant to the effects of the rings due to their natural aversion to being ruled by others, the nine mortals, who become the Nazgûl or Ringwraiths, prove easier targets.

And there you have it, folks: a truncated version of Tolkien’s logical history of the forging of the rings of power — the real version.

Anyone who has seen Amazon’s version should immediately detect several glaring discrepancies. For one, ROP depicts the creation of Vilya, Narya, and Nenya first. Not last, as Tolkien writes. First. Additionally, Sauron, in the form of Halbrand, assists in the process. The Three are not unsullied.

Frankly, this comes across as very arrogant to me. I can only imagine the conversation between Payne and McKay. “Listen, I know Tolkien said Celebrimbor made the Elven Rings last and without Sauron’s help, but let’s do the exact opposite of what the legendary author wrote. Why? You know. Just because. No reason.”

I’m not nitpicking. This seemingly slight rearrangement of events has huge ramifications for the rest of the story. For example, if the Three were forged under Sauron’s insidious mastery, and the elves knew about it, why did they continue to utilize the rings for centuries? During the events of the Lord of the Rings, Elrond, Galadriel, and Gandalf (who received his ring from Círdan the Shipwright, its original owner) openly carry Vilya, Nenya, and Narya. During the War of the Ring, even as he leads the Fellowship of the Ring, the Grey Pilgrim uses Narya, the Ring of Fire, which, according to this show, was corrupted by Sauron and designed to enslave its bearer.

Some may counter that Sauron could not influence the Three without the One or that the Keepers of the Three were too formidable for his control. The show wrecks both of those arguments, too. From the earliest episodes, Vilya and Nenya are portrayed as already affecting High King Gil-galad and Galadriel — long before Sauron forged the One. Even Elrond perceives that by using the rings, his kinfolk have become the Dark Lord’s “collaborators.” No matter. By the events of The Lord of the Rings, they have all, apparently, resigned themselves to that fact.

Of course, there’s a much simpler way to avoid these problems — stick with the story as Tolkien told it.

This leads to the show’s next problem with the re-ordered timeline: after choosing to make only three rings for the elves, Annatar and Celebrimbor lose all rationale for the order of the creation of subsequent rings. The logic in these scenes is stretched ridiculously thin as Annatar is forced to pull random numbers out of thin air. Why just three rings for the Elves? Why not seven? Or 42? And why nine for Men? When confronted with these questions, Annatar offers up garbled nonsense about “the perfection of the three thrice perfected” and atoning for the greed of the imperfect seven by making nine more. It makes no sense.

In the lore, as I pointed out, the Gwaith-i-Mírdain appear to make as many rings as they can before detecting Sauron’s treachery and abandoning the task. Although all the rings were originally meant for the elves, Celebrimbor only keeps those he knows Sauron never touched. When Sauron captures the rest, he distributes them as he sees fit to susceptible candidates. It’s a genuinely fascinating story… which Amazon desecrates for no apparent reason.

After six episodes of tip-toeing around the fact that so much of Annatar and Celebrimbor’s storyline simply makes no sense, Payne and McKay offer up their interpretation of the Siege of Eregion, which, like everything else in the show, pales in comparison to what Tolkien described. In the lore, Sauron forges the One Ring and amasses an army to reclaim the rings of power, which Celebrimbor has hidden. In ROP, Sauron has no ruling ring… and no army. So, how, exactly, does he pull off the siege?

Well, in episode one, Adar and a bunch of orcs slaughter — and I mean slaughter — Sauron because he doesn’t love them, and he calls them ugly names or something. Unfortunately for them, Sauron’s blood comes alive, chokes a rat, and then turns into a black symbiote goop monster, which attacks a pioneer woman in a wagon. (For those who haven’t seen the show, I kid you not: that is exactly what happened.) Somehow, attacking this poor woman enables our goop monster to turn into — Halbrand! Adar, of course, doesn’t recognize Halbrand. So Sauron, in the form of Halbrand, visits Adar, who controls the orc army in Mordor, and tells him that Sauron is in Eregion so that, conveniently, when the time is just right, Adar will attack Eregion to “kill” Sauron, which is exactly what Sauron wants. Still following? The orcs all hate Sauron, so when they learn that he might still be alive, they freak out and agree to make war on Eregion; Halbrand sneaks away from Adar’s army, woos Celebrimbor, and completes the 16 remaining rings of power before Adar shows up to “kill him.” But that’s when Adar’s plans fall apart. Even though the orcs all despise Sauron, literally waging this entire war just to kill him, this one orc lieutenant named Glûg, who looks like a goblin version of Art the Clown, suddenly gets cold feet because, well, his soldiers are dying on the battlefield, and apparently, he didn’t see that coming. In that moment, a disillusioned Glûg decides — plot twist! — he actually wants to work for Sauron! And in that moment, the whole army’s allegiance miraculously shifts to Sauron. And then they kill Adar. 

That’s the Siege of Eregion as told by Payne and McKay, who thought they knew better than Tolkien but instead degraded themselves with an absolutely illogical, straight-up goofy story for an unthinking audience.

Amazingly, after 1,700 words, I have only covered the show’s best storyline. If you think that sounded bad — and compared to Tolkien’s work, it was absolutely dreadful — rest assured that everything else in the show was worse. Much worse. My objective in this article was to show you an example of how much better the author’s lore is — and how flippantly Amazon trampled it.

Of course, if you enjoy watching Elrond kiss his future mother-in-law, or the show’s single most pointless character dub the nameless gray wizard “Grand-Elf” (say it aloud), or Isildur, the future founder and king of Gondor, the greatest city of Men, aimlessly chase his horse for two episodes, then, perhaps, The Rings of Power is the show you’re looking for. If not, may I suggest that you read The Silmarillion or the appendixes of The Lord of the Rings? Marvel at Tolkien’s elegant, intelligent, and inspired prose… and mourn at how stupid we have become.

If J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay are the best Amazon could find for the most expensive TV show in history, then it seems serious storytelling in the age of cookie-cutter CGI blockbusters is even harder to come by than I thought.